


Strays

by Hideous_Sun_Demon



Series: The Start Of The Rest Of Our Lives... [2]
Category: Designated Survivor (TV)
Genre: Amy has issues, Angst, Gen, Hannah is in denial about being a mum, Hurt/Comfort, pre Aaron/Hannah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-15
Updated: 2018-09-15
Packaged: 2019-07-11 17:29:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15977063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hideous_Sun_Demon/pseuds/Hideous_Sun_Demon
Summary: As it turns out, there’s a lot more to looking after a kid than protecting them from would-be Russian assassins.





	Strays

**Author's Note:**

> ‘Holds up Amy Bleecker:’ I’ve only known Amy for one episode, but if anything happened to her I’d kill everyone in this room and then myself.

Hannah doesn’t technically own a cat. It would be more accurate to say that a cat owns her. She made the mistake once of throwing the stray thing a bit of leftover chicken while taking her bins out and ever since then it’s been her constant, yowling shadow. Hannah has been locking, double locking, triple locking her door and all her windows for longer than she can remember, but somehow she’ll still wake up more nights than not with a black blob taking dominance over the end of her bed, glaring at her through the darkness and purring like an angry motorcycle.

She hasn’t given it a name, but she’s told it to piss off so many times that it’s started to respond to the words, so she figures it’ll have to do.

When she and Amy make it up to her apartment, Piss Off is already waiting at the door, glaring up at her for the audacity of leaving the country for a few days without leaving food for the stray that hangs around her building. Hannah glares right back.

“Here we are,” Hannah announces, and as she gestures around she is struck very suddenly by the fact that she has one bed. Actually, she only has one of everything- she barely has enough cutlery to sustain more than one person. She isn’t exactly in the habit of entertaining guests, let alone full-time boarders. Shit. Okay.

“You can sleep on the couch for now,” she decides finally. “Until I figure out what to with you.” She turns back around to face Amy, who is fully engrossed in that damn cat. She’s sat cross legged on the floor, scratching behind the ears of a very smug looking Piss Off with a delighted little smile softening her features. The cat, it looks like, is going to be enjoying this new living situation a lot more than Hannah is.

Hannah looks at the pair of them. She’s got two strays now. She thinks she prefers the cat.

“Amy,” she prompts, and the girl finally looks up.

“Yup, I heard you. Couch sounds good.” She stops her stroking for a fraction of a second, and Piss Off responds by rubbing against her knee demandingly. Amy obliges him fondly. “Cool cat,” she says.

Hannah rolls her eyes. “Don’t encourage him.”

Amy gives Piss Off one last firm pat before springing up onto her feet. She expertly slings her bag across the room to land neatly on the couch and then bypasses it completely, making a beeline for the kitchen. Hannah watches exasperatedly as the kid scrutinizes the bareness of the fridge. Everything is either half eaten or off- she’s kind of been too busy for much grocery shopping lately. With a put-upon sigh that reminds Hannah instantly and painfully of Damien, Amy snags a tub of butter and goes digging around in the drawers for a knife.

“Yeah, sure, just help yourself, I guess.” She folds her arms, watching as Amy grabs two slices of bread from the bread bag and lathers them with an ungodly amount of butter- that bread is almost definitely stale, but Amy doesn’t seem to mind.

“Sorry,” Amy mumbles through a mouthful of bread, not sounding very sorry at all. “I haven’t eaten in, like, 48 hours.”

The words remind Hannah just how famished she is as well. But more than that, they leave a sinking feeling in her stomach as she realises that this, providing food, is an honest-to-god _responsibility_ of hers now. Kids have to eat, don’t they?

Oh god. Can someone remind her why she agreed to this?

“I’ll...order us a pizza,” Hannah mumbles. Amy nods enthusiastically, shovelling the second slice of bread into her mouth and already reaching into the bag for a third.

 

* * *

 

When Aaron shows up at her door the next day, all Hannah can feel is relief. Relief that he might actually help her sort her shit out- she’d explained the situation over the phone and he’d at least agreed to see her- and also just...relief at seeing him again. It had been a while. Feels that way, at any rate.

Aaron’s face, though, can’t seem to decide what emotion to show. Hannah hadn’t thought it was possible for so many to pass over his face in the span of five seconds. First is relief as well, but that only lasts a moment before being overtaken by confusion, a little hurt, and something she can’t quite put her finger on, before it finally settles on anger.

“What the hell are you thinking?” Aaron growls. Hannah gestures him inside with a roll of her eyes.

“Nice to see you too, Aaron.”

He clearly isn’t in the mood for levity. “It’s bad enough that you disappeared off the grid without telling me _anything_ , right when we needed you to clear up issues with the Attorney-General that _you_ caused. But now you drag a whole new load of trouble back from England?’

Hannah waits patiently for his diatribe to end, for him to realise that they aren’t alone. It only takes him a second, and he stiffens when Amy lounges over, smirking ear to ear.

“My name’s Amy,” she drawls, waving slightly. “‘Load of trouble’ is just a nickname.”

Aaron blanches, all the frustration leaking out of him as he looks Amy up and down. With everything Hannah knows about this girl- her eidetic memory, and her irritating penchant for hacking into people’s phones- it’s easy for her to forget that she’s just sixteen. But for Aaron, it must be painfully obvious.

“....Hi, Amy,” he finally says, and shakes her hand with a formality that Hannah finds unexpectedly endearing. “I’m Aaron Shore, I work for the President.”

“Yeah, National Security Advisor,” Amy nods, and then at Aaron’s quizzical look, adds: “Hannah’s told me all about you.”

Aaron shoots her a subtle look, and Hannah responds by glaring daggers at Amy. She had told her, the night before, that she would be bringing her former boss in to help smooth a path for them- and yeah, maybe she had gone into a little more detail than necessary- but that didn’t justify the subtle smirk toying at the girl’s lips that Aaron has very clearly noticed. But the look doesn’t last long- Amy’s mouth twists into a frown as she stares Aaron down, and suddenly Hannah can see as well just how young she is.

“You would’ve known my dad, right?”

Aaron glances Hannah’s way again, this time looking almost visibly panicked. Hannah tries to hide her own grimace.

“Uh...yeah,” he says, tone carefully neutral. “I did.”

Amy bunches up the hem of her sweater. “Cool,” she says, voice tight. Hannah feels a stab of sympathy. Meeting Hannah, finding out her father was the target of some very dangerous people, had been one thing, but now Amy has been thrust into a whole new world, full of people who knew Damien as someone completely different from the man she’d called her dad.

“Alright,” Hannah says, surprising herself with how gentle she sounds. “Just...leave us alone for a minute.”

The moment passes, and Amy’s impish smile returns with full force. “Oh sure,” she says sarcastically. “I’ll just go to my room.” She plops down on the blanket strewn couch, grinning up at them.

Out of the corner of her eye, Hannah sees Aaron’s lips twitch. She fights the urge to do the same. “Keep being smart, and you’ll be sleeping in a box,” she says instead. For the second time in two days, she surveys her apartment with mounting disappointment- the open plan design had been a draw when she’d bought the place, but now it’s becoming the bane of her existence. She can’t even say exactly why she feels the need to talk about this privately; Amy might be a bit of a brat, but she’s mature enough to be kept in the loop. But even so, Hannah doesn’t know what Aaron is going to say- and she doesn’t want him to censor himself on Amy’s behalf; she wants to know exactly what he thinks about all this. And, a small part of herself insists, she also wants to spend some time alone with Aaron for herself.

She firmly tells that part of herself to shut the hell up.

Well, outside isn’t an option- Hannah figures she’s earned the right to be paranoid, and she doesn’t want to risk anyone eavesdropping on something as sensitive as this. So that leaves…

Hannah sighs, and gestures curtly for Aaron to join her in the one area of her apartment that has any semblance of privacy: the bedroom.

Aaron only hesitates a second before following her, and does his best not to stand too close. Hannah raises an expectant eyebrow, half-anticipating another verbal beatdown, but now Aaron just looks exasperated.

“Tell me honestly, Hannah,” he sighs, “have you thought this through at all? You met this girl, what, three days ago? And all you know about her is that her dad was a-” he cuts himself off before he can finish that accusation, and Hannah can’t help but resent him for it- he’s never held back before. She also hates the way his eyes had flickered to the bed behind her as he’d said it. He seems to notice the way her hackles have raised, because he ducks his head peaceably.

“Look, you’re out of a job, you-” he gestures helplessly to where he’d been glancing at before. “You don’t even have a spare bed. What’s your plan here- letting her sleep on your couch until she’s eighteen?”

Hannah shrugs. “I’ll get her a fold-up.”

Aaron almost laughs, incredulity etched in every fissure of his face. He shakes his head, levelling her with a hard, discerning stare. “Seriously, Hannah,” he implores. “What are you doing?”

That’s a damn good question. Hannah averts her eyes, folding her arms defensively against her chest. She hasn’t shown him Damien’s last message to her-hasn’t shown anybody, in fact- but as she remembers Damien’s face in that video, the way he’d been holding back tears as he’d begged her to save his daughter, Hannah knows that Aaron would understand that.

“The right thing, I guess,” she says softly. She sneaks a glance back to where Amy is sitting, sees Aaron doing the same. From here, she seems like the picture of calm, if not for how tightly she’s gripping her phone, or the way that her eyes have glazed over the screen as though she isn’t seeing anything at all.

“She has nobody else,” Hannah continues. “And Damien asked me to protect her. I know you didn’t care about him, but I-” she stops herself, takes a steadying breath. “I need to do this,” she finishes. It isn’t what she meant to say, but it’s still true. This is what she owes Damien, after everything. After not being able to save him.

She turns back to Aaron and meets his gaze with a stubborn jut of her chin- and this, this is familiar, isn’t it? “Aaron, I didn’t ask you here for a lecture, I asked you for help. Please.”

The conflict warring it out in Aaron’s eyes is familiar too. And so is the way he sighs, soft and pliant; and Hannah knows she has him.

“I’ll...talk to the President, try and convince him to take you back, but I can’t make any promises,” Aaron says gruffly. He nods to Amy. “As for her, you should talk to Kendra.” He raises an eyebrow at their surroundings. “And start looking for a new apartment.”

“Okay,” Hannah breathes out, trying to control the beam spreading across her face. “Thank you, Aaron.”

Aaron doesn’t see, though. He’s watching Amy again, brow furrowed thoughtfully. Hannah wonders abruptly if he’s any good with kids, and then shakes the thought away. “What’s she like, anyway?”

The bruise on Hannah’s jaw from where Amy had decked her throbs. She brushes a finger over it, almost smiling through the pain. “She’s…” She sighs. “She’s just like him.”

Aaron chuckles properly now. “Good luck with that, then.”

Oh yeah, Hannah thinks. She’s gonna need all the luck she can get, and then some.

They walk back out into the main area, and Amy glances up, the vulnerability that Hannah had gotten a glimpse off before banished into thin air. “Going so soon?” she asks with a meaningful lilt to her voice, and Hannah scowls.

Aaron shifts awkwardly. “Afraid so. It’s...good to meet you, Amy.” He turns to the door and then swivels back, scanning the girl up and down once more. “I’m sorry about your dad,” he says finally.

Amy nods jerkily. “...Yeah.”

Aaron nods tightly, and then glances at Hannah. She takes it as her cue and follows him to the door, holding it open for him. He lingers in the doorway, looking her over this time. As he takes in the bruise colouring her jaw, and the way she’s favouring her right leg, that same indefinable expression from when he’d first seen her crosses his face again.

“Hannah, I-” he begins, voice far softer than before. He swallows, and Hannah tries to hide the way she tracks the movement of his adam’s apple. “I’m glad you’re home,” he says finally, and she feels a strange mix of relieved and bitterly disappointed. She pushes it stubbornly aside as she fixes a warm smile to her lips.

“Good to be back.”

The door closes behind him with a soft click, and Hannah is left staring at the wood with an oddly restless feeling in her chest. The silence left in his wake is broken after only a few seconds, though, by Amy.

“...So, you two are absolutely shagging, right?”

Hannah whirls around. “What?”

Amy rolls her eyes in a way that makes Hannah want to pluck them out with a blunt knife. “Oh, come on! _Hannah…..I’m glad you’re home,”_ she says sombrely, dropping her voice to match Aaron’s gravelly tone and furrowing her brows dramatically in an imitation of the man. Hannah has to admit, it’s pretty spot on. Amy shrugs, grin firmly back in place. “I mean, he seems kinda boring, but he’s cute. He’s not the worst pick in the world.”

Hannah is about to hotly contest the claim that Aaron is boring before realising that it wouldn’t exactly help her case. Instead, she shakes her head derisively. “Sorry I can’t girl-goss with you,” she said sardonically- Amy wrinkles her nose in distaste- “but there’s nothing for me to tell you, considering I’ve actually kind of been busy with-”

Her eyes widen as she realises that there’s only one possible way that sentence can end. _Your father. Your father dying. And then, before, ‘shagging’ your father. Who is now dead._ God, she really isn’t good at this, is she? Amy seems to understand what she isn’t saying as well, and she looks away, forcefully clamping down on her bottom lip.

Hannah curses under her breath, and wonders how the hell she’s going to do this.

 

* * *

 

A month in, and all the progress they’ve made is moving Amy from the couch to a fold-up bed, and Hannah discovering that she really, _really_ , hates sharing her space with someone full-time. Especially when that someone happens to be a sixteen year old with no sense of boundaries and a serious attitude problem. Hannah counts herself lucky that she’s so busy now that she’s gotten her job back- something she can thank Aaron for, she’s sure- because if she had to spend more time with Amy than she already does, she’s pretty sure she’d have committed murder by now.

Because Amy isn’t _easy_. Hannah hadn’t expected sheltering an orphaned teenager to be all sunshine and lollipops, but she hadn’t expected it to be this frustrating either. Amy started off obedient enough, if a bit cheeky, but after a week or two of settling in she’s starting to talk back, to huff around in melodramatic mood swings, and basically embody every aspect of adolescent stroppiness that Hannah can’t stand.

And unfortunately, this teenage brattiness is combined with a near-genius IQ, which makes everything ten times worse. Hannah knows damn well that Amy has been hacking into her laptop and snooping around her work files. She’s gotten into the habit of leaving her browser open on pages pricing one-way flights back to London. Petty is as petty does. Hopefully Amy will get the message before Hannah has to use more memorable methods of communication.

When this new phase of Amy’s started up- wandering through the city at all hours of the day and night- Hannah had thought she’d be delighted that she’d finally get some time to herself. At the very least, she’d thought she’d understand- and she does: Hannah gets the feeling of wanting to run away from her problems, or towards a distraction. God knows she’s been doing that her whole life- she ran from her father to the FBI in search of freedom, she ran from the FBI to London in search of revenge, and now…

Hannah doesn’t know where she’s running to now. All she knows is that she doesn’t like it when Amy does it. The memory of Amy’s bruising attack leaves her confident that the kid can probably take care of herself, but it doesn’t ease the gnawing feeling in Hannah’s stomach when Amy’s been gone for one hour too many that she’s reluctantly diagnosed as worry.

It makes sense, she supposes. She’s made a promise to Damien; to herself, to watch out for Amy. But it doesn’t mean she enjoys the feeling.

Tonight, Amy has crawled in at close to 2 in the morning. It’s later than she’s ever been gone before, and Hannah had unwillingly waited up the whole time, glaring expectantly at the phone ringing out a number that she knew wasn’t going to pick up. When Amy had slouched through the door, Hannah had only managed to get out a few words before Amy had mumbled out a sarcastic “Sorry, mum,” with an aggressive eye roll to boot, and collapsed into her bed; shoes still on and out like a light in under three seconds.

Now Hannah is lying on her own bed, calling another number for no other reason but that if she doesn’t do something with her phone, she’s going to end up hurling it at her wall.

“I’m going to kill her, Chuck, I swear,” she snarls before Chuck can even squeak out a hello.

“Please don’t. I don’t think I can get you out of prison.” Chuck’s voice is almost unintelligibly groggy, and Hannah belatedly realises that he had probably been sleeping. He hasn’t hung up on her yet, though, so she continues with her rant.

”I thought the sulking and the playing loud music at fuck-off-o’clock in the morning was bad enough. But now she’s running around the city all night. I don’t know what the hell she’s doing! Or who she’s doing it with! She’s clever enough to get herself into all sorts of trouble.” She massages her temple wearily. “I need to give her a curfew or something.”

Chuck laughs in a way that Hannah doesn’t like at all. “Aww. You sound like such a-“

“Don’t say it. Do _not_ say ‘mum,’” Hannah growls warningly, all the more aggressive for the fact that she realises that he’s right.

He chuckles again, but when he speaks he sounds serious. “I thought you’d be the best person to get through to her,” he says. “Doesn’t she remind you of _you_ when you were her age?”

Now it’s Hannah’s turn to laugh. “...How exactly do you picture me at sixteen?”

“Terrifying,” Chuck says flatly. “Absolutely terrifying.”

And, honestly, fair enough. Hannah had never been quite this bad, though. To be fair, she also hadn’t just lost her father.

As if he can read her thoughts, Chuck murmurs: “She’s been through a lot, Hannah.”

“I know,” Hannah sighs, tilting her head to look through at the sleeping figure in the living room. “I know. Thanks, Chuck. Sorry for waking you.”

She hangs up, and almost against her will, finds herself getting up and crossing over to the wider apartment, sitting down as quietly she can on the couch and gazing down at the gentle rise and fall of Amy’s shoulders. A pair of yellow eyes blink back at her through the gloom, and Hannah realises that the slightly darker blob of black on the bed is that fucking cat. It’s tucked itself against Amy’s chest, and the girl has curled herself around it, hand buried in its thick, scraggly fur. It glares balefully up at her, and Hannah scowls.

“You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?” she hisses. Piss Off flicks his tail irritably in response.

Hannah resents being chastised by a cat, but she admits that it has a point. “Fine,” she grumbles, and pulls her laptop to her, opening up google and typing in _how to deal with grieving teenager_ , fingers feeling heavy with every press of the keys.

 

* * *

 

Hannah snaps awake in an instant, shooting into a sitting position. As exhausted as she is, she’s a chronically light sleeper, and she swears that she just heard a window slide open.

There, again; this time the sound of someone jostling the blinds, followed by uneven footsteps. _Shit_. Hannah lunges for the gun in her bedside drawer- you can never be too careful- and holds it at the ready as she pads down the still-unfamiliar hall of their new apartment. She can tell the sounds are coming from Amy’s room- and, yes, she can make out muffled swearing now- and she starts to guess that she won’t be needing the gun after all. Her suspicions are confirmed when she edges into the room and catches Amy steadying herself against her dresser. Not for the first time, Hannah deeply regrets letting Amy have the bedroom right beside the fire escape- their living situation may have changed, but Amy’s habits have not. She feels it even more viciously when she flicks the light switch on and gets a blinding eyeful of Amy’s unsteady gait and blotchy cheeks. She doesn’t need the visual though; she can smell the alcohol all the way from here.

Hannah slams her gun down on the bedside table. “Explain. Now.”

“Heeeeey, Han,” Amy slurs, grinning abashedly as she pulls herself into something vaguely approaching an upright position. “Thought you’d be asleep. Hoped….”

“I was,” she snaps. “You woke me.” She surges forward, snatching Amy’s purse from her limp grasp and ignoring the girl’s squawk of protest as she starts digging through it.

“Hey, what the fuck, dude-”

“Oh no, you do not get to _dude_ me right now.” She finds what she’s looking for- a passable looking fake ID- and shoves it under Amy’s nose. She finds herself bitterly disappointed all of a sudden, and wonders why she’d expected anything better from Damien’s daughter. “Are you fucking kidding me, Amy? You know I work for the FBI, right?”

“Oh no, I forgot!”” Amy claps a mocking hand to her mouth, nearly losing her balance in the process. “Are you gonna arrest me? Come on, Hannah, I know you’ve done tonnes...es...more i-illegal shit than this. It’s not a big deal- I just had a...couple’a drinks.”

“That is not the point,” Hannah snarls. “And this is not a _couple_ of drinks. You don’t look like you should be alive. I’m surprised you managed to get home.”

“Uber,” Amy says shortly. She’s lost her smirk, swaying even more wildly than before. Suddenly, she doubles over, and Hannah watches in dismay as she lets loose a spurt of watery vomit onto the carpet. “Ugh…” she mumbles, wiping her mouth on her sleeve.

Hannah sighs. “Okay, come on.” She hooks an arm around Amy’s waist, and they do an awkward four-legged hobble across the hall to the bathroom. As soon as they get through the door, Amy goes down again, gripping the toilet bowl with shaking hands as she retches in heave after heave. Hannah sighs again as she kneels down beside her, pulling Amy’s hair out of her face and deeply regretting all her life choices.

“Next time you want to drink, tell me and I’ll get you some,” Hannah chides firmly, because she knows damn well by this point that if Amy wants to do something, there’s nothing she can do to stop her. The most she can do is try and minimise the damage. She winces as Amy throws up again; the girl is well and truly fucked up, and not in the good way. “What were you even drinking?”

Amy shudders. “Started with vodka.....Then...someone gave me summin’ called a......Long Island Iced Tea.”

Hannah tightens her grip on the hair she’s holding. Someone gave a clearly underage girl a dangerously alcoholic drink? Amy is lucky she isn’t in the boot of someone’s car right now. And whoever gave it to her is lucky that Hannah wasn’t there, otherwise they wouldn’t be alive to talk about it.

“M’sorry,” Amy mumbles, cringing away, and Hannah realises she’s still got her hair in furious grip. She lets go immediately.

“It’s okay.”

Amy sniffles, and as her shoulders shudder, Hannah realises that she’s crying, gasping against the porcelain. Fuck, shit- Hannah isn’t equipped to deal with this. What’s the protocol for drunk, sobbing teenagers? She is hit with a sudden, ridiculous urge to call up Aaron for help.

She doesn’t call Aaron. She doesn’t ask Amy what’s wrong- because, god, how can she not know?- or pull her into a hug. Hannah just lays a gentle hand against the girl’s shaking shoulder blade, and hopes that it’s enough.

 

* * *

 

It’s one of those rare evenings where there is absolutely no chaos. Hannah is sitting at her desk, sipping wine as she traces a few leads on her laptop and actually feeling something that she vaguely remembers being called _relaxed_. Behind her, Amy is stretched out on the couch watching television. They haven’t had an argument in three days now. Hannah reckons this should be commemorated as a national holiday.

She turns around, ready to float the topic of dinner, but all thoughts of either eating or celebration are wiped from her mind as she looks at Amy. She, Hannah realises, isn’t watching the TV at all, merely gazing blankly at it with suspiciously bright eyes. She’s curled up on her side the way she used to do with the cat that hung around the old apartment. Amy had really seemed to love that cat. She’d suggested bringing it with them when they moved, and Hannah had laughed the idea out of her mouth. Now, she almost regrets it.

Amy notices her staring, because she licks her lips before fixing her glassy gaze on Hannah. “My dad…” she murmurs. “He wasn’t a good person, was he?”

Hannah swallows. She’s expected this to come up, on some level, but that doesn’t mean she is remotely prepared for it. What can she even say to that? She doesn’t want to lie to Amy- the kid deserves more than that, especially when it comes to her own father- but the truth is….Honestly, Hannah doesn’t even know what the truth is.

“Amy….” she finally sighs. “Good, bad….the world is a lot more complicated than that.”

“I know that! I’m not a child!” Amy exclaims, flushed and indignant, but then she draws back in on herself. Hannah privately thinks it’s ironic- Amy has never seemed more like a child than she does now. This side of her, unsure and scared, isn’t one Hannah is overly familiar with after months of Smart-Ass Amy or Angry Amy or both, and she waits quietly, trying to figure out the best way to proceed.

Amy beats her to it, continuing to speak in a low mumble. “But, I mean...he hurt people, right? All those people on that list….I’d known about them all that time, and I never even thought about…”

Hannah shakes her head immediately. Amy is far too young to be feeling the kind of guilt she can see marring her face. “It wasn’t your job to think about what they meant,” she says firmly. “To you, he was just your dad.”

Amy nods shakily. She isn’t crying, but her eyes are big and wet as she stares imploringly at Hannah. “That’s how I wanna remember him, but I just can’t stop thinking about it. The way everyone speaks about him...it’s like he wasn’t even a person, just a-a problem that they’ve finally gotten rid off.” She swallows thickly, and Hannah suddenly feels a vicious stab of resentment towards anyone idiotic enough to talk about Damien in front of Amy.

“You’re the only one who talks about him like he meant something,” she finishes quietly.

That gives Hannah pause. “He was…” she begins, and then stops again. What had Damien been? To her, he’d been a lot of things: a colleague, a friend, a traitor, a saviour, a…

Her lips thin. The exact nature of her relationship with Damien isn’t something she’s discussed with Amy, even though she knows the girl has figured it out well enough, and she doesn’t want to bring it up now; doesn’t want to muddle an already messy conversation. Instead she says the truth- the only truth that still matters right now.

“He saved my life, you know?” Hannah says with a small smile, and Amy’s eyes go wide. “More than once, actually. He saved a lot of lives.” It’s something Hannah has thought about a lot- all the work they’d done together, all the people he’d helped her to save; had that all been part of his ruse? Or was there a part of him, even a tiny sliver, that really did care? She supposes it doesn’t really matter- regardless of the motive, there are still countless people alive thanks to Damien Rennett. That’s all Amy needs to worry about, anyway.

“He was so much more than the hurt he caused, Amy.”

Amy blinks rapidly, a watery smile tugging at her lips. She peers discerningly at Hannah. “Did you love him?” she asks after a moment.

Hannah freezes. “I-”

Had she loved Damien Rennett? She- no, she didn’t think she had. But, Hannah realises, she could have. Maybe. If he hadn’t been who he was, or if she had been more willing to forgive, or if he hadn’t jumped in front of that gun-

Hannah can’t give Amy an answer, but she doesn’t seem to expect one. Her eyes are shimmering with tears as she speaks.

“I did,” she whispers brokenly. “I do. Still.”

She looks almost remorseful about that; about loving her own father, and a voice whispers in Hannah’s head: _sixteen_. God, she’s too young for this.

“I know,” Hannah murmurs back. She stands up abruptly, heading to the kitchen- deciding that these sorts of emotions shouldn’t be handled on an empty stomach. But as she walks past the couch, she reaches down to give Amy’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. And as she does, she feels the brush of Amy’s fingers as she reaches up to meet her, just for a second, before they fall back down to her lap.

 

* * *

 

Hannah likes to throw herself into her work. It’s the best method she’s ever found of keeping her brooding thoughts at bay, and she’s needed that now more than ever. Even simple investigation does the trick to keep her occupied, but when that isn’t enough, there’s always the other part of the job, something she can track down and beat up with her own two hands; something she can be furious about.

But sometimes there’s no job to do. Sometimes even imagined anger isn’t enough to keep her thoughts at bay, on the nights when she can’t stop remembering Scott, and Jason, and John, and Damien-

And Damien; the way Amy tells the same sort of jokes-

And Damien; the way that even their handwriting is the same-

And Damien; the way that Hannah will look at her sometimes and swear that she’s staring right at him-

And Damien; _fuck_.

Nights like these call for sitting on the kitchen floor at 1 AM in her pyjamas, drinking vodka straight from the bottle.

She’d thought she’d been quiet enough, but after five minutes of silent contemplation and blind drinking, Hannah glances up to see Amy lurking in the shadows of the kitchen entrance, expression unreadable as she watches her.

Hannah doesn’t ask her how long she’s been there, or apologise for waking her, or say anything, actually. She just stares at her almost defiantly over the neck of the vodka bottle, daring her to make one of her smart-ass comments. Amy, though, doesn’t make a sound, just walks to the fridge and rummages around in the freezer. She emerges with a carton of ice cream, and snags two spoons before dropping down opposite Hannah on the cool linoleum tiles. She cracks open the lid and digs a heaping scoop straight out of the carton before sliding it across in offering.

Hannah stares down at the ice cream. It’s vanilla; and that had been Damien’s favourite flavour as well, and- _oh goddamnit_.

She puts down the vodka and takes a spoonful of her own. Amy dutifully snags the half empty bottle and takes a sip, only spluttering a little. Hannah says nothing, just scoops up some more ice cream, then takes back the proffered bottle and has a swig of her own.

Amy pokes at the ice cream with her spoon. “Sorry about your boyfriend,” she mumbles.

Hannah’s eyes flutter closed. Damien had never been her boyfriend, not really. And she doesn’t think she’d ever wanted him to be. But he’d been _something_. Nights like these, she can at least admit that to herself.

“Sorry about your dad,” she mutters back. Amy just hums in reply, taking back the bottle, pouring a drizzle into the ice cream carton and taking a considering bite. She shrugs, takes another. They stay like that, sharing ice cream and trading drinks from the vodka until the carton and the bottle are both empty, and the sun is creeping in through the windows, chasing away the shadows and spreading pale light across the walls of their home.


End file.
